Members only

You couldn’t get any work if you weren’t an Equity member and you couldn’t get an Equity card unless you had some work. This was a widely repeated paradox, or double-bind, about starting as an actor when I was young. We all, in turn, of course, disproved it.

It was remembered in a newspaper column this week by James Whale, who is a journalist and broadcaster and who was called Michael Whale until he had to join Equity long ago, when there was already a Michael Whale. He quit the union when closed shop rules became illegal in the ’eighties. In fact his piece was an attack on Equity’s recent posturings on international politics which have led to some quite high profile members leaving in protest, especially those with Jewish roots.

All this makes me rather sad. For reasons in a way connected with the half-believed contradiction with which I started, acceptance as an Equity member used to be a rite of passage situation for an aspiring young professional. And I spent a good deal of time at Equity meetings — dominated in those days by internal warfare between Left (famously the Redgraves) and Right. Not that Equity Right was very far to the right.

I was an Equity deputy for I think three companies I was in, and fortunately never encountered any very hairy situations. I was within the closed shop, and the union was there at least to prevent any duplication of professional names. Thanks, perhaps, are due for this from the earlier Michael Whale, and the earlier David White whose membership obliged his namesake to become (Sir) David Jason.

I would have hated to have to change my name on becoming an actor. Though I did toy with the idea of Roy Sansom. Goodness knows why, I’m not a Roy and have always been called Roger. Anyway, I soon worked with the actor Roy Sampson. All my family have “N in the middle, M on the end” always on the tips of their tongues.

When I was in my first rep job, I was called to the theatre phone in the daytime. The caller was not pleased it was me. She wanted her son, a local volunteer helper whom I knew as Roger with a different surname. Turned out she had remarried, and he was bringing his name into line. This boy aspired to be an actor. “You realise you can’t act as Roger Sansom?” I checked with him. “Why not?” “Because of me” I answered, with all the weight of my twenty-one years. Didn’t hear of that Roger again. Or did I?

On the day of a weekday matinee I was in at Farnham, I got a letter from Equity alleging that I had ‘done a moonlight’ on my landlady at .. I forget where, a coastal town, at the end of the run of … and, yes, I forget the name of the show. This was bad, they found it necessary to inform me. Infuriated, I rang up to tell the signatory of the letter that I had never been to X, had never played in X, and had certainly never bilked anyone. And that if anyone was using the same name as me, their job was to stop this, not to take the word of a stranger that I was dishonest! Deflatingly, I couldn’t get the Equity officer concerned that morning, and soon had to leave for my matinee in the home counties.

Long story short — in the end Equity told me they had persuaded THAT Roger Sansom to include a middle name.

Corollary — when I was involved with subletting a flat in Chalk Farm at another point in the ’seventies, I did the reverse, writing to the Musicians’ Union because a tenant had left owing us a number of weeks’ rent. The M.U. was tightly defensive (maybe Equity had been of me, other than to me), but the recent tenant got back to me, very hurt. “You went to my union, man!” And coughed up a week out of the several he owed.

James Whale ends his coumn “ .. I was an amazing Abanazar”. Well, I was an amazing Abanazar too, in “Aladdin”, my favourite pantomime. At least I think I amazed some people.

I played it two Christmases running, and at the very beginning ‘Wishee Washee’ said to me “I believe you’ve worked with my girlfriend”. Naturally I asked her name, and didn’t recognise it. (But then I had once been in pantomime with someone among the chorus dancers who was later well known, and not realised it for a long time.)

Eventually, ‘Wishee’ told me, after we’d clarified the duplication, “I’m glad that wasn’t you. That Roger was a pain, apparently.” Which she must have been telling him about ‘me’ in the early stages.

There are yet more Roger Sansoms, and of course the closed shop ended for names just as for membership. One established actor had, after decades, to shorten his first name from Colin to the awkward Col, which made his billing seem like a colonel’s rank. A younger namesake had become very well known, a situation to dread when there is no regulation.

But the stories above were all when there WAS regulation of names — theoretically. As James Whale and the future Sir David experienced. How many Roger Sansoms there have been, whether any of these name stories are connected, I have no way of knowing.

Which does make me sad for my union and my profession. I have supported it to the limited best of my ability. There are have been occasions when I have felt I needed and deserved more union support. But then actors — even collectively — have never been strong. I have always said “Whatever Equity is like, it’s what we’ve got.” So I don’t want to join in rubbishing it. I still have — as they say — “feelings”.